Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My honourable friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality (Tony McNulty) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
	Section 36 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 allows for the electronic monitoring of those liable to be detained under the Immigration Acts. This includes asylum seekers, illegal entrants, those found working in breach of their conditions of stay, overstayers, people subject to further examination at a port of entry, and those refused leave to enter.
	Electronic monitoring takes three forms: telephone reporting using voice recognition techniques, tagging and tracking. These are being used, in combination with face to face contact at immigration reporting centres, to improve compliance with the requirements we place on people to remain in contact with us. Contact management, including electronic monitoring, is a key aspect of the new asylum model as described in the five-year plan.
	During the passage of the 2004 Act, the then Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Beverley Hughes, stated that an electronic monitoring requirement would be imposed only with the consent of the individual. This commitment was reiterated when her successor Des Browne wrote to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Consent is not a statutory requirement but was introduced as a matter of policy in recognition of the novel use of electronic monitoring in the immigration context.
	The electronic monitoring pilots have generally been a success, but asking for the subject's consent is inconsistent with any other area of contact management. It hampered our ability to manage contact with people flexibly because the need for consent left us with very little recourse if the individual failed to give it or where, having initially agreed to be monitored electronically, they subsequently failed to comply. That is why I agreed a change in the policy before the summer recess to allow the immigration service to draw up contact management plans without first seeking the consent of the individual. The consideration of whether the individual will comply with specific requirements will be part of the process of deciding how best to manage contact and this change places us in a stronger position by enabling us to consider what action to take where someone fails to comply with an electronic monitoring requirements.
	The impact on compliance in the short period since the change in policy has been positive. Between July and September, of 53 people who failed initially to comply with telephone reporting, 47 began to do so after one written warning that their continued failure may lead to their re-detention. Since the start of the pilot in October 2004, we have tagged 49 people, 23 of them since the policy on consent was changed, but we have seen no adverse impact on the level of compliance notwithstanding that we have tagged a larger proportion of high risk cases without seeking their consent.
	This is a promising start, but we shall continue to monitor the situation as electronic monitoring is applied in increasing numbers. I will update the House on the progress we are making in a further Statement early in the new year.